Metered Access

Crain's Detroit Business is a metered site. Print and digital subscribers have unlimited access to stories, but registered users are limited to eight stories every 30 days. After viewing three metered stories, you'll be asked to register or log in. After eight more stories in 30 days, you'll be asked to subscribe.

Some 117 scientists and researchers from 11 universities and colleges in Michigan have penned a letter to the state's 17-member congressional delegation urging them to prevent proposed legislation that could reverse tough new regulations on mercury emissions and other air toxins adopted last December by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The federal Mercury and Air Toxics Standard will help "protect and clean the air we breathe, assure that local fish are safer to eat, and protect and preserve the wildlife and natural spaces we love from harmful pollution originating in Michigan and elsewhere," said the April 5 letter signed by the Michigan university professors and researchers. To read, click here.

Scientific studies clearly demonstrate that mercury and other toxic air emissions like arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium and cyanide are hazardous to human health, said Joel Blum, a professor in the department of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Michigan.

The EPA estimates that the regulations will eliminate as many as 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks and prevent 130,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms and 6,300 cases of acute bronchitis among children each year.

"By promoting policies to allow contamination to stay in place, it affects lower classes disproportionately," said Jerome Nriagu, a professor in the department of environmental health sciences at UM's School of Public Health.

Nriagu said more than 225,000 children and 775,000 adults have asthma that has been made worse by exposure to coal-burning power plants.

The EPA regulations require coal- and oil-fired power plants to reduce emissions by 90 percent by 2016. To read more, click here.

"There are very well-established technologies for reducing emissions from power plants," which are the largest polluters left, Blum said in a recent interview with Crain's. "Half the power plants are using it nationally. It has to do with the age of the plants."

Blum said Michigan has several power plants that have not installed the latest mercury-scrubbing technology – activated carbon injection.

The average age of Michigan's 59 power plants is 44 years. But only 16 percent of the plants' total capacity use scrubbers, and only 2 percent of capacity have activated carbon injection technology, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, EPA and SourceWatch.

But Blum said more than half of the mercury deposited in Michigan comes from sources hundreds and thousands of miles away.

"It stays in the atmosphere and is dropped in wetlands where it is converted to methyl mercury and gets into the fish and food chain," Blum said.

Niladri Basu, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at UM's School of Public Health, said the effects of mercury and other pollutants in the Great Lakes have been well-established.

"I am an environmental toxicologist. My lab did several studies on fish and humans to address mercury in the Great Lakes," Basu said. "Mercury is getting worse in Michigan lakes, rivers, forests, everywhere."

Basu said fish, birds, mammals and humans have detectible levels of mercury in their bodies. Large predatory fish like walleye, northern pike and largemouth bass are most vulnerable.

Research shows that exposure to mercury in adults can damage the nervous, immune and cardiovascular systems.

The Michigan Department of Community Health, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and Michigan Department of Natural Resources have collaborated in issuing statewide fish advisories for every lake in Michigan.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality also has adopted rules that go into effect in 2015 to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.

To comply with EPA standards over the next four years, power plant operators in the U.S. will need to spend about $9.6 billion, Nriagu said.

Dave Meador, CFO of DTE Energy in Detroit, said DTE plans to decommission several of its older power plants and spend about $250 million each to upgrade five of its power plants to meet the EPA's tougher new air pollution standards.

DTE owns nine fossil-fuel plans and the Fermi 2 nuclear power plant.

Meador said DTE has spent more than $1.5 billion to upgrade its coal-fired plant in Monroe to meet EPA standards. The plant cost $400 million to build in 1971.

"For every dollar invested, there are $6 to $9 in health benefits, principally in health benefits and avoided social services costs," Blum said.

But Sens. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., have been attempting to reverse several environmental regulations related to the Clean Air Act, including the new mercury emission standard, said Howard Learner, director of the Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center.

"(Republicans) are claiming these are job-killing public health actions," Learner said. "In some cases, they are saying the EPA should be dissolved. They don't want the EPA to issue clean air, water standards to protect people in the U.S."

Republican Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette is leading an effort by 19 other state attorneys general and the governor of Iowa to overturn tough new mercury pollution standards that went into effect last December by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Click here for the Crain's story.

Over the past two decades, the Clean Air Act has substantially lowered the levels of mercury and other toxins from medical incinerators and other incinerators.

But many older power plants were exempt from the act until the new EPA standards were implemented, Blum said.

Besides the University of Michigan, professors and researchers supporting the EPA regulations are at Michigan State University, Wayne State University, Hope College, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo College, Eastern Michigan University, Calvin College, Michigan Technological University, Grand Valley State University and Ferris State University.